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Sunday, February 28, 2016

In my mind and memory I can pinpoint the exact moment a musky obsession rooted itself within the fabric of my soul. It was September, and up until that frame in time I was a very casual esox hunter, severely limited by my lack of knowledge and watercraft. Thanks to a good friend and his boat, I found myself riverside slinging musky meat into the unknown. We were several hours in and my forearm throbbed with every cast of the ten weight. As it does when you don't see any sign of aquatic life for several hours, your mind can wonder away from your stripping pattern to other obligations, wants, or needs. I literally wasn't paying attention at all to my fly approaching the boat, or the 50" inch musky casually following a few feet away. All I can tell you is that when my eyes affixed on the river dragon before me, all bodily motions seemed to slow to a halt. I stopped stripping and my jaw hung low as I struggled to reignite the synapses in my nervous system. When they re-engaged, I blurted out some words I cannot recall and hastily went into a poor ass rendition of a figure eight. Little did I know, but Betty (yea, she has a name) had already lost interest as she went parallel to the boat, and confidently drifted away into the glare. "DID YOU SEE THAT?!!!" Those are probably the only words I remember recalling mere milliseconds after the moment that changed the game as I know it. Experiences like that are relatively common for the musky noob, and I was definitely out of my element during my first few encounters with Esox masquinongy. That is the thing about musky. One can catch tarpon, stripers, or a giant barracuda but a fish of that size, in freshwater, is not only elusive, but mystical. I once joked that musky were my unicorn, but in reality, they are accessible to anyone willing to participate in a verifiable game of meat bingo...